Marketing Strategies and Planning for Travel and Tourism Companies

This report, focusing on marketing essentials for travel and tourism, begins with an introduction to the field and the role of marketing in promoting destinations and attracting customers. It then delves into the specific case of Highland Explorer Tours, a UK-based travel company. Task 1 explores the roles and responsibilities of marketing functions within an organization, including research, competitor analysis, campaign creation, social media management, and budget creation. Task 2 examines the marketing mix and its application in the marketing planning process, using ABTA as a comparative example to Highland Explorer Tours, analyzing product, price, place, promotion, people, process, and physical existence. Finally, Task 3 focuses on creating a marketing plan for the accomplishment of organizational objectives. The report provides a comprehensive overview of marketing strategies within the travel and tourism sector, emphasizing practical applications and real-world examples.

Marketing essential
for travel and tourism
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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Task 1...............................................................................................................................................3
P1 Roles and responsibilities of marketing functions of an organisation..............................3
P2 Roles and responsibilities of marketing ...........................................................................5
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................6
P3 Marketing mix to the marketing planning process to achieve business objectives of
different tourism organisation................................................................................................6
TASK 3............................................................................................................................................9
P4 Marketing plan for the accomplishment of the objectives of the organisation.................9
Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................13
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................14
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Introduction
Travel and tourism marketing are the marketing strategies that are adopted by the
companies for promoting the plans and for attracting numerous customers to the organisation.
Tourism marketing plays a crucial role in promoting the tourist attractions and activities that are
carried out on such destinations. The tourism companies adopt numerous marketing strategies to
attract tourist and promote the destinations. Highland Explorer Tours is a travel and tourism
company which was established in 2006 in Edinburgh, UK. The tourism company have been
providing tour packages throughout Scotland and focus on providing best experience to their
customers. Highland Explore Travel is one of the award-winning tourism company and has
collaborated with Edinburgh based Radical Travel Group, Ltd. The travel and tourism company
believes in delivering best tour packages with trained and professionals guides(Alford, P., 2018).
This project report covers all the necessary information regarding the marketing plans and
strategies that are adopted by the company.
Task 1
P1 Roles and responsibilities of marketing functions of an organisation
The functions of marketing in tourism industry is to attract numerous customers and
promote the brand which can be done through e-mail, social media and other internet platforms.
Through implementing marketing strategies, the tourism company can promote and advertise
their plans and programs through which large number of tourist's can be attracted. Highland
Explorer Tours have a specific research department which help the company to analyse and
understand the market needs and build a strategy that can help to promote and attract large
number of customers.
The roles and responsibilities of marketing are explained below:
 Conducting an effective research: The basic function of marketing department is to
create an effective marketing research strategy that can help to analyse the needs and
demands of the customers and corrective actions can be taken by the companies(Ali,
2015). Highland Explorer Tours have a research team which is designed specifically for
analysing and understanding the market demand which will help the company to grasp
more opportunities.
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 Analysing competitors: Through marketing and research plans, the company can
analyse their competitors and take necessary actions which can help the brand to stand
out. Highland Explorer Tours analyse their competitors by understanding the external
environment and plan to provide more attractive offers to attract wide number of
customers (Bao, 2018).
 Creating campaigns: Marketing strategies help to create attractive campaigns and
programs which will attract quality customers and can also build goodwill of the
organisation. Highland Explorer Tours creates several campaigns which can attract
numerous tourists and the destinations can be promoted.
 Building materials for promotions: The basic function of marketing department is to
create materials that can help to promote the plans and programs of the business.
Highland Explorer Tours focus on creating materials that can help to promote the
operations of the company, the materials which are promoted are authentic and reliable.
 Maintaining social media: Through marketing strategies, an organisation can manage
their activities that can be handled through social media. Highland Explorer Tours
manage their social media accounts and pages through which they promote their plans
and programs and the company monitors all the activities before posting anything on
social media (Cooper, 2020).
 Focusing on internal communications: The values, mission and objectives of the
company must be communicated to all the employee's which will help to have clarity in
the specific job role. Through marketing strategies, the roles and responsibilities of the
employee's are defined clearly. Highland Explorer Tours encourage on maintaining an
effective two-way communication that can help to interact with the employee's and the
goals and objectives of the company are clearly communicated.
 Build a marketing budget: A marketing budget is build with the help of finance
department which is based on the analysis of the needs and demands of the market.
Highland Explorer Tours conducts an research which analyses the market needs and a
budget is created for conducting the operations of marketing.
 Maintaining goodwill of the company: Through marketing functions, a company can
build and maintain their goodwill in the market through which loyal and potential
customers can be attracted to the company. Highland Explorer Tours focus on
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maintaining their brand image and goodwill in the market by providing best reliable and
attractive offers to the customers and the tourism company also focus on giving best
services to their clients (Dileep and Mathew, 2017).
 Creating a strategic plan: Marketing functions help the organisations to plan
strategically through which competitive advantage can be achieved. Highland Explorer
Tours strategically plan their activities so that all the tasks are carried out strategically
which will help in the accomplishment of the organisational goals effectively.
 Enhancing creativity: The marketing department focus on enhancing the creativity and
innovation of the programs and activities that can help to attract wide number of
customers. The function of marketing is to enhance the creativity of programs and
activities that can attract potential customers. Highland Explorer Tours focus on creating
campaigns with most creative ideas that can attract numerous customers and influence the
customers positively.
P2 Roles and responsibilities of marketing
Marketing the process of promoting the goods and services of the company to the
customers. Marketing department performs important functions right from transfer of goods and
services from the manufacturer to the final consumer. It performs various roles and holds
responsibilities which are crucial for the growth and sustainability of the business. It coordinates
with different other department in the organisation in order achieve efficiency in organisational
management (Kotoua and Ilkan, 2017). It also to engage with target prospects, carry different
operations of the business. Marketing department in Highland Explorers Tours hold different
roles and responsibilities to monitor marketing activities and other related activities of different
department. Some of these are discussed below:
In Highland Explorer Tours, marketing department coordinates with human resource
department for retaining the best suited employees in the organisation. Marketing helps to gather
information about the market trend and pattern of human population. It suggests the human
resource department to recruit young talents, decisions regarding to the planning and
implementations of new strategic workforce management. It also helps to provide training and
development to personnel in organisation. Marketing helps to render market information about
the latest technological trends which helps to give advanced training where employees are been
trained to give special computer aided assistance.
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Marketing and finance
Marketing department coordinates with finance department in order to estimate profit and
cost analysis. All the major financial decisions pertaining to financial and managerial reports for
the organisation. In order to estimate the income earned and expenses incurred. It helps to
calculate the financial stability of the business. The different pricing strategies are been
established and through market analysis Highland Explorer Travels calculate how far the market
price is been effective to achieve profit goals and covers the cost. It also helps in decision
making about the investments in new ventures and expansion of business (Mahrous and Hassan,
2017).
Marketing and research and development
With the market fluctuation of demand and supply, the market analysis becomes
unpredictable. Marketing department coordinates with research and development department in
order to analyse the current market trend and preference, research and development collects all
the essential market information to make services for Highland Explorer tours in order to make
affordable and quality holiday packages. By preparing innovative plans and packages Highland
Explorer Travels are able to introduce new holiday packages which not only attracts new
customers but also helps to gain the competitive advantage.
Information system and marketing
Information system consist of information technology (IT) artefacts and people using the
information to accomplish organisational goals (Malik and Sharma, 2019). Due to increasing
technologies,in the market Highland Explorer Tours have adopted different technological
advanced equipment like manager information system, Radio frequency Identification device,
employee performance system in order to evaluate the performance of each employees etc. so
that the effective management in organisation can be achieved. Implementation of these
technological advancement requires coordination with marketing department to collect current
marketing information.
TASK 2
P3 Marketing mix to the marketing planning process to achieve business objectives of different
tourism organisation.
BASIS HIGHLAND EXPLORER TOURS ABTA (Association of British
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Travel Agents)
Product Highland Explorer Tours different
destination tours and travel services around
Scotland. It provides services like
accommodation packages, food and safety
services, holiday packages, travel
insurance to render quality services with
great customer experience.
ABTA provides tourism
services in UK and abroad,
providing tourism services,
travel assistance to the
customers, health and safety,
to serve the customers with
quality services.
Prices Effective pricing strategies leads to
maintain market demand and supply.
Pricing strategies used by Highland
Explorer Tour price skimming or premium
pricing strategy, which enables to set high
prices to cover the cost incurred in
providing quality services (Pappas, 2017).
Pricing strategies used by
ABTA is market penetration
pricing strategies to expand
market share goals. ABTA
uses these pricing strategy to
maintain market growth and
sustainability.
Places These cover places around Scotland.
People can access booking services from
everywhere as they provide online booking
websites and physical units to book tours
which becomes easily convenient and
accessible from anywhere. They have
different web portals which provides all
the important information like mode of
vehicle, number of passengers etc.
regarding the tour.
These provides tours around
UK and abroad, they have
physical units at different
destinations for providing
accommodation services and
food to people before and
during tour.
Promotion Highland Explorer Tours uses different
promotional techniques like online media
and social media, they promote their
ABTA uses social media
marketing, print media,
outdoor marketing and online
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services through different social media
platforms like Facebook and Instagram to
attract youngster by effective marketing
message. They also provide online media
like email marketing, to the selected and
important customers (Pike, 2015).
marketing. Outdoor marketing
such as hoardings to attract the
customer for great deals, print
media like brochures, online
media email marketing, social
media using all social media
platforms.
People Highland Explorer Tours recruits
employees who are highly loyal and
enthusiast. They also collects feedback
from customers regarding each their
experience with the tour guides and
employees then are been appraised to
higher positions. The loyal customers
works customers works enthusiast and help
to boost sales and achieving organisational
objectives.
ABTA recruits people who are
hard-working and efficient.
They keep monthly grading
system in order appraise the
employees so that they work
more efficiently.
Process The process involved in rendering the
services to final consumer includes target
segmentation, identifying needs and wants
of the target customers, setting
organisational objectives and strategies,
developing services to render to the final
customers, establishing financial budget,
preparing marketing plan, rendering
services and performing follow up to
evaluate to evaluate the efficiency of the
task accomplished. It also involves
accumulating customer feedback in order
to measure the performance of the
ABTA renders services which
includes innovative tourism
services. Process includes all
the procedures which helps to
deliver the services to the
customers. ABTA renders
innovative services and
collects valuable customer
feedback.
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organisation.
Physical existence Physical existence here means the physical
outlet of the organisation, where the
customer can physically visit the outlet.
Highland Explorer Tours have physical
outlets in Scotland. Physical outlets helps
to build strong customer reliability and
goodwill in the market and in minds of
customers. Employee are also asked to
dress in uniforms to develop the
professional image and follow ethical code
of business.
ABTA has physical existence,
it has physical outlets across
UK. People can access the
physical stores from anywhere
in UK.
TASK 3
P4 Marketing plan for the accomplishment of the objectives of the organisation
Marketing plan is an important component of business plan of the organisation which
consists of goals and objectives that needs to be accomplished by the organisation. It is a layout
of the plan that needs to be followed by the company in the achievement of the set objectives.
Various set of actions and strategies are listed in the marketing plan of the business. A marketing
plan help the business to organise their activities and execute the plan according to the planned
strategy (Pike, 2016).
Highland Explorer Tours will introduce new tour packages of Asian countries such as
Thailand, South Korea and Singapore to explore various exciting destinations for the customers.
The travelling agency will also introduce cost effective tour packages with maintaining the best
quality of services that can be experienced by the travellers (Ramaj and Ukaj, 2018).
Objective
The travel and tourism company will set the objectives which will help the company in
the accomplishment of the goals effectively and efficiently. The goals set by the company are
smart, measurable, achievable, reliable and time bound that needs to be accomplished.
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The tourism company, Highland Explorer Travel is going to introduce various tour
packages to different destinations and they will introduce various budget friendly plans which
can help the company to attract numerous customers and maintain goodwill in the market.
SWOT Analysis
SWOT analysis is an approach through which a company can identify the internal and
external environment of the organisation. Internal environment such as strengths and weakness
and external environment refers to opportunities and threats that can affect the business. By
effectively analysing these factors, a business can gain competitive advantage and the goals of
the organisation can be achieved effectively (Rather and Hollebeek, 2020).
STRENGTHS
 Diversified Culture: Travel and tourism company helps to attract numerous customers
around various destinations and also promotes cultural diversity. By accepting different
lifestyles, eating habits, values and beliefs of each person around the globe, the
companies promote the diversified culture that can help to attract numerous customers.
Highlander Explorer Travel focus on engaging in diversified cultural activities by
involving in different activities that are carried out by various people of different cities.
 Promotion of local festivals: The company will promote the local festivals of the selected
destinations that can help them to attract potential clients and promote the festivals that
are carried out the heritage tourist places. Highlander Explorer Travel will create
attractive and creative campaigns and plans through which the company will promote the
local festivals of the destinations that are offered by the companies (Tripon, 2018).
WEAKNESS
 Lack of creativity: The lack of innovation and creativity leads to failure in delivering the
accurate message and also creates an inability to attract potential customers. Lack of
creativity of Highlander Explorer Travel creates a barrier for the company to attract
customers as the company is unable to deliver their message and promote their activities
in an creative and attractive manner.
 Increase in turnover rate: The employee turnover of travel and tourism company has been
increasing as the work load in the seasonal time is high and the wages that have been paid
to the employee's is low, which results in the increase of employee turnover rate.
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Highlander Explorer Travel also lacks ability to retain their employee's as the employee's
of the company are demotivated and are not satisfied from their job's.
OPPORTUNITIES
 Digital marketing: With the help of social media, the company can attract customers,
build and maintain their goodwill of the organisation. The company can use digital media
platforms to promote the activities of the company and numerous potential customers can
be attracted. Highlander Explorer Travel is carrying their marketing strategies through
social media which can help the company to attract people through these platforms and
potential clients can be attracted.
 Uncommon destinations to attract people: The travel and tourism company can promote
destinations which are not famous through which the company can attract customers to
theirs companies. Highlander Explorer Travel will plan tours to destinations which are
unusual and the company will promote such destinations through this the company can
attract customers to their business (Vitouladiti and Dedousopoulos, 2015).
THREATS
 Competitive rivalry: Due to rapidly changing market, the travel and tourism company is
facing high competition in the market. Several other companies are operating within the
market which offer services at low-cost which increases the competition to he businesses.
Highlander Explorer Travel is facing huge competition as there are various other
companies which are providing the same services at different costs which increase the
competition to the organisation.
 Finances: The limited finances can affect the travel and tourism company as the
customers will avoid travelling otherwise look for low-budget tour packages which will
create a barrier for the organisation to attract numerous customers. Due to limited
finances, the sale of the tourism company Highlander Explorer Travel can be affected
through which the company can face huge loss (Vellas, 2016).
STP
STP is a marketing tool which help the organisation to segment, target and position the
audience of market. The initials of STP stand for segmentation, targeting and positioning.
Through this marketing approach, the business can segment the customers, target the segmented
customers and position the adjustments that are based on the customer needs.
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Segmentation
Through segmentation , the business can classify the customers to various categories,
such as demographic, geographic, physiographic, values and behavioural factors.
Targeting
This approach of the strategy help the company to analyse the segmented market and
identify the opportunities that can be beneficiary for the organisation for the achievement of the
organisational goal effectively and efficiently. Highlander Explorer Travel target their
segmented audience by analysing the market through conducting an effective research and by
understanding the customer demands (Murphy, Gretzel and Pesonen, 2019).
Positioning
It is the last step of the STP marketing technique. With the help of positioning, the
company can position their plans to the targeted customers of the segmented market. Highlander
Explorer Travel Position their plans to their targeted audience through which they can attract
numerous customers and accomplish competitive advantage.
MARKETING MIX
The four P's which are analysed through this marketing analysis are: price, place, product
and promotion. Through this approach, the company can analyse the macro factors which can
affect the companies operations. The organizations create a strategy through which these
elements are analysed.
Price
Highlander Explorer Travel planned their pricing strategy through cost control strategy
and will provide budget friendly tours and plans to their customers.
Place
Highlander Explorer Travel analyse the market and provide the services to the places
which are easily accessible to the customers which will help in attracting more potential
customers for the organization (Yousaf and Xiucheng, 2018).
Product
The travelling company, Highlander Explorer Travel has launched several new plans and
programmes with the objective of attracting numerous clients which will also maintain the
goodwill of the organisation.
Promotion
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Highlander Explorer Travel has created promotion strategies and they will promote their
brand through social media, magazines, newspapers and other media platforms. Such media
platforms will help the business to attract customers through various platforms.
MONITORING AND CONTROLLING
It is the last step that is performed by the organization as the company monitor the tasks
and activities that are performed by them and control through taking corrective actions that are
required. The company analyse the performance gaps and deviations that can arise due to
inability to perform up to the standards that are set and steps are taken to overcome the gaps
(Gorlevskaya, 2016).
Conclusion
Thus, marketing is a process which involves all the activities and procedures to promote
the goods and services to actual customers. It is a tool which enables to carry function if business
before, during after actual sales. It involves advertising, packaging, promotion, accounting,
accounting. It is a process where the marketer can directly and indirectly engage with the target
customers to develop profitable relationship with the target customers. It also involves in
building strong customer perception and achieving market share goals. Marketing is an important
tool which helps to build organisational goodwill, growth and sustainability in the market.
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REFERENCES
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